Effects of health insurance on labour supply: evidence from the health care fund for the poor in Vietnam

Nga Lê, Wim Groot, Sonila M. Tomini and Florian Tomini

Applied Economics, 2019, vol. 51, issue 58, 6190-6212

Abstract: The expansion of health insurance in emerging countries raises concerns about the unintended negative effects of health insurance on labour supply. This article examines the labour supply effects of the Health Care Fund for the Poor (HCFP) in Vietnam in terms of the number of work hours per month and labour force participation (the probability of employment). Employing various matching methods combined with a Difference-in-Differences approach on the Vietnam Household Living Standard Surveys 2002–2006, we show that the HCFP, which aims to provide poor people and disadvantaged minority groups with free health insurance, has a negative effect on labour supply. This is manifested in both the average number of hours worked per month and the probability of employment, suggesting the income effect of the HCFP. Interestingly, the effects are mainly driven by the non-poor recipients living in rural areas, raising the question of the targeting strategy of the programme.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2019.1613509 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:applec:v:51:y:2019:i:58:p:6190-6212

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2019.1613509

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().